Italian Producers Extend Reign of Excellence at World Competition

Summary

Italy once again dom­i­nated the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, receiv­ing a total of 200 awards, with the Italian pro­duc­ers and millers win­ning the high­est num­ber of awards for the tenth con­sec­u­tive year. The com­pe­ti­tion saw a sig­nif­i­cant par­tic­i­pa­tion of pro­duc­ers from var­i­ous regions of Italy, show­cas­ing their com­mit­ment to qual­ity and sus­tain­abil­ity in olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Italy was once again the most awarded coun­try in the 2025 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, hav­ing reached the round fig­ure of 200 total recog­ni­tions – 11 shy of the country’s record of 211 acco­lades set in 2021.

The Italian pro­duc­ers and millers received the high­est num­ber of awards for the tenth year in a row, mak­ing their entry in the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils with a record 163 Gold Awards and 37 Silver Awards. 

They also have sub­mit­ted the high­est num­ber of entries, 258, just two short of the record 260 entries set in 2021.

Such sig­nif­i­cant fig­ures crown a suc­cess­ful decade, dur­ing which farm­ers across the coun­try have con­sis­tently proven their qual­ity and demon­strated an ever-grow­ing exper­tise in craft­ing out­stand­ing blends and mono­va­ri­etals. 

Overcoming press­ing issues, such as the effects of cli­mate change and increased pro­duc­tion costs, they have remained true to the value of sus­tain­abil­ity, imple­ment­ing organic and regen­er­a­tive prac­tices that are now widely adopted among top-tier pro­duc­ers.

The 2025 NYIOOC saw a mas­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion of pro­duc­ers from cen­tral and south­ern regions of the coun­try, includ­ing Tuscany, Puglia, Sicily, Umbria, Campania and Lazio. 

Entries also came from Liguria, Marche and Abruzzo, as well as the island of Sardinia, and the north­ern regions of Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige.

“We had a great har­vest, thanks to a good dis­tri­b­u­tion of rain­fall through­out the year, not exces­sively long dry peri­ods and that, in any case, pre­vented olive fruit fly out­breaks,” said Daniel Ronca of Frantoio Il Mandorlo.

“The flow­er­ing was very good both in terms of ​‘migno­latura’ (bud growth) and pol­li­na­tion, so let’s say it was an ideal year,” he added.

His fam­i­ly’s com­pany received a Gold Award for Il Mandorlo Bio, an organic blend pri­mar­ily com­posed of Frantoio and Moraiolo, with smaller per­cent­ages of Leccino and Pendolino.

Scattered over six hectares of organic land, their 2,000 olive trees thrive on the Florentine hills, north of the Tuscan cap­i­tal, where the com­pany mill was estab­lished in 1974. Today, the facil­ity boasts the lat­est gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­ogy.

“We also work for third par­ties, and some of our clients par­tic­i­pated and won awards at the NYIOOC,” said Ronca, who has been in charge of the milling oper­a­tions since 2019. 

“This adds to the sat­is­fac­tion of obtain­ing our Gold. We decided to par­tic­i­pate in the World Competition because it offers pres­tige and recog­ni­tion, as well as through tools like the Olive Oil Times World Ranking,” he added. ​“Since we have cus­tomers in the U.S. and world­wide, our par­tic­i­pa­tion was aimed pre­cisely at giv­ing them fur­ther proof of the qual­ity of our oil.”

In the adja­cent town of Pontassieve, the ham­let of Sieci is home to the organic pro­ducer La Gramigna, which received a Gold Award for its Olio Grullo, a Maurino mono­va­ri­etal.

This and other native vari­eties, such as Leccino, Frantoio, Moraiolo and Pendolino, for a total of 6,000 olive trees, many of which are cen­turies old, are cul­ti­vated on the hills east of Florence by Renata Conti and her fam­ily.

“This oil is the result of a great har­vest, prob­a­bly the best of the last years, both in terms of quan­tity and qual­ity, but also of the great care that we put in pro­duc­ing our extra vir­gin olive oils in our small, state-of-the-art mill,” she empha­sized. ​“The NYIOOC is an impor­tant show­case on the inter­na­tional mar­ket, and this award pays off our com­mit­ment to qual­ity.”

“We have cho­sen this name for our oil because we like to joke a bit,” Conti pointed out, refer­ring to grullo, a regional word often used affec­tion­ately to describe a loopy per­son. ​“The label, which my son designed, includes a ​‘funny story’ that changes every year.”

Deep cor­po­rate val­ues coun­ter­bal­ance light-heart­ed­ness in pack­ag­ing. The com­pany is firmly com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment, main­tain­ing soil health and pre­serv­ing the land­scape.

“Our orchards are sus­tain­ably man­aged, and renew­able energy sources power our facil­i­ties,” Conti said. ​“Furthermore, we are engaged in safe­guard­ing the beauty of this land­scape, both car­ry­ing out recov­ery inter­ven­tions of aban­doned olive orchards and plant­ing new trees, also aim­ing at restor­ing the hydro­ge­o­log­i­cal cycle.”

In north­ern Lazio’s Tuscia, an excel­lent har­vest earned Pietro Re top hon­ors for Tamia Gold Organic, at its tenth acco­lade, and Tamia Caninese Organic, at its sev­enth Gold Award.

“I am glad to say that this is our tenth suc­cess­ful World Competition and we rank sev­enth among the Italian com­pa­nies in the World Ranking,” Re said.

At the Sergio Delle Monache farm in Vetralla, he enhances native vari­eties, includ­ing Caninese, used to cre­ate the name­sake award-win­ning mono­va­ri­etal, along with Maurino, Frantoio, Bolzone and Leccino, some of which are accu­rately blended to cre­ate the flag­ship blend, Gold Organic.

Favorable weather dur­ing the warm months secured an excel­lent fruit devel­op­ment. The olives were then crushed in a lat­est-gen­er­a­tion mill in the area.

“The World Competition is a global ref­er­ence point and gives us pro­duc­ers vis­i­bil­ity, also thanks to [its] effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem,” Re noted. ​“Indeed, we became known to our importers thanks to the Best in Class that we won at our first par­tic­i­pa­tion in 2014, and from that moment on, we have par­tic­i­pated every year.”

Producers in the south had to face more chal­leng­ing weather con­di­tions, pri­mar­ily due to drought, which in some cases led to lower pro­duc­tion vol­umes; nonethe­less, qual­ity remained high.

Among the Apulian extra vir­gin olive oils rec­og­nized in the Official Guide to the World’s Best Olive Oils, three mono­va­ri­etals were pro­duced by I Pavoni in Cerignola: Pavoni Masseria Fortificata Coratina, at its sev­enth Gold Award in a row; Pavoni Masseria Fortificata Peranzana, at its sec­ond Gold Award; and Pavoni Masseria Fortificata Leccino, which received a Silver Award (its sixth acco­lade).

“We had a medium to low pro­duc­tion in terms of quan­tity, but the qual­ity was still excel­lent,” owner Giovanni Simeone said. ​“Last sum­mer was dry, but we could irri­gate the orchards and over­come this issue. Drought is cer­tainly one of the most urgent chal­lenges at the moment. Therefore, we recently invested in build­ing a new well and improv­ing our irri­ga­tion sys­tem.”

An ancient masse­ria lies at the heart of the estate, which encom­passes 30 hectares of organic olive groves fea­tur­ing 9,000 trees of var­i­ous vari­eties, includ­ing the native Coratina, Peranzana, and Bella di Cerignola, as well as Ascolana, Nocellara and Leccino.

“After con­vert­ing to organic farm­ing, at our first par­tic­i­pa­tion at the NYIOOC years ago, we obtained a Gold Award. It was thanks to this com­pe­ti­tion that we found our cur­rent importer and entered the inter­na­tional mar­ket,” Simeone revealed, adding that today they export almost 60 per­cent of their pro­duc­tion to the United States.

In Sicily, the Mandranova farm is sit­u­ated a few kilo­me­ters from the south­ern coast of the island, in Palma di Montechiaro, in the province of Agrigento.

“This year, we par­tic­i­pated in the World Competition with Selezione, a new blend that we have cre­ated in the mill with our Nocellara, Biancolilla, Cerasuola and Giarraffa,” co-founder Silvia di Vincenzo spec­i­fied after receiv­ing a Gold Award for this extra vir­gin olive oil made up of autochtho­nous vari­eties.

Promoting bio­di­ver­sity and pro­tect­ing the envi­ron­ment are core val­ues of the fam­ily com­pany. The Mandranova estate spans approx­i­mately 180 hectares and encom­passes nearly 40 hectares of olive groves, many of which are cen­turies old. Younger trees have been recently added to increase pro­duc­tion.

“We can bet­ter man­age the qual­ity of our prod­ucts thanks to an irri­ga­tion sys­tem and care­ful mon­i­tor­ing of the orchards,” Di Vincenzo said. ​“Very high tem­per­a­tures and drought are ever more fre­quent, mak­ing the farm­ing oper­a­tions more chal­leng­ing. Nevertheless, we are struc­tured to cope with all the vari­ables at play. We check on the olives daily, and we carry out an early har­vest. The fruit is crushed in our state-of-the-art mill, which allows us to set every detail of the pro­duc­tion process.”

The Sicilian farmer explained how sus­tain­able farm­ing prac­tices have become not only nec­es­sary to pre­serve the envi­ron­ment, but also ben­e­fi­cial in improv­ing soil health.

“We let the spon­ta­neous herbs grow, and the no-tillage tech­nique helps us keep the soil mois­ture high,” she said. ​“We mow the crop a cou­ple of times a year, which acts as a nat­ural fer­til­iza­tion.”

Farmers from the north­ern regions had to con­tend with var­i­ous weather chal­lenges, but thanks to care­ful pro­duc­tion man­age­ment, the results were still out­stand­ing.

San Massimo, located in the south of Valpolicella, near Lake Garda, is where Azienda Agricola Ca’ Crespana pro­duces Paneolio Amethyst and Paneolio Peridot, as well as Leccino and Grignano mono­va­ri­etals, both of which have received a Gold Award.

“We are really happy about these awards,” said Johannes Pan, the co-owner of the fam­ily com­pany. ​“They are an impor­tant con­fir­ma­tion of the work we do every day with pas­sion.” 

“We always face the chal­lenges of agri­cul­ture with enthu­si­asm, to con­stantly improve,” he added. ​“The bar is always raised higher, and this moti­vates us. These awards also serve as a sig­nif­i­cant show­case in the inter­na­tional mar­ket. Even if our main focus remains the regional mar­ket, we are happy to make our prod­ucts known beyond the bor­ders.”

The nearby lake cre­ates a Mediterranean micro­cli­mate ideal for the olive trees, which enjoy the wide tem­per­a­ture range between day and night typ­i­cal of these north­ern lat­i­tudes. Very cal­care­ous and well-drained soils, shaped by glac­i­ers mil­lions of years ago, offer opti­mal con­di­tions for olive farm­ing.

“Last crop year was quite chal­leng­ing – we had more rain than in recent years,” Pan said. ​“In agri­cul­ture, every­thing can change rad­i­cally from one year to the next, and you always start from scratch.” 

“Thanks to tar­geted agro­nomic mea­sures car­ried out by my brother and a very dis­ci­plined har­vest, we still man­aged to obtain excel­lent qual­ity,” he con­cluded. ​“This shows how impor­tant expe­ri­ence, flex­i­bil­ity and team­work are.”